Though recently the landscaping arts have gained respect and popularity, the British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey’s work definitely puts a new twist to the term when they use grass as their medium in numerous works.

In Ackroyd and Harvey’s site they describe their work as a culmination of architecture, biology, photography, and sculpture to create works that have “an intrinsic bias towards process and event and often reflecting urban political ecologies by highlighting the temporal nature of processes of growth and decay.” Their earlier works used architecture as their canvas on a grand scale with such pieces as shown below.

Dilston Grove (2003)

Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (1993)

The Undertaking (L’Antre-Prise) 1992

Now, their newest work is an ingenious use of natural process and creativity. Ackroyd and Harvey have been using the natural production of chlorophyll through photosynthesis as a photographic process of developing portraits “printed” on grass. They manipulated the light the grass received by projecting the negative image onto it which produces shades of rich greens and yellows to bring the composition out.

Testament (2011-1998)

Park Ave + Resident (2011)

Presence (1992)

Up close the photos simple look like a patch of grass, but as the observer moves further away, the portraits grow clearer, crisper and into focus. The greatest part of this process for me, as a fan of ephemeral art, is the fact that though the image can last for quite a long time as the grass grows the image out, it will fade, change color, and age like a vintage photograph as depicted clearly in the picture below off of the Domaine de Chamarande site where their work is currently on view until September 30th, 2012 in France.